Thank you for your 20 May 2026 response to our letters to your office.
We regret your decision not to accept the Union Against Hunger memorandum and, for the reasons set out below, ask you to reconsider this decision and/or ensure that a relevant senior official from within the GNU receives the memorandum and demonstrates the seriousness that this issue deserves.
We also regret that your letter shows no sense of urgency in dealing with South Africa’s devastating hunger and malnutrition crisis.
We note the important statements in your letter that:
- South Africa is not experiencing a shortage of food production;
- South Africa’s agricultural exports recorded a record surplus in 2025; and
- Despite this, hunger and food insecurity arise “primarily from … poverty, unemployment, income inequality and household purchasing power within an open market economy.”
The fact that, as you state, “the Constitution does not assign responsibility for food security, nutrition, household food access and social protection to a single department or ministry” is precisely the problem — and one that your response unfortunately attempts to pass responsibility away from rather than address collectively and urgently.
Further, your letter does not honestly account for the fact that leading the process and finalisation of the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan — a broad plan that encompasses all areas
impacting access to sufficient food and basic nutrition — falls within the responsibility of your department. This plan has been inordinately and unjustifiably delayed.
In relation to the Plan, your department holds a key government responsibility under international law as the Plan gives effect to the 2014 National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security, which in turn flows from the Integrated Food Security Strategy of 2002. Such a national strategy is a requirement under General Comment 12 on the Right to Adequate Food that gives effect to Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that South Africa ratified in 2015.
Recently, your department informed Parliament that the Plan would only be endorsed by EXCO in Q4 of 2026/27, effectively next year. This is unacceptable given that a draft of the Plan was already presented to you as Minister in October 2025. Considering that we are all in agreement about the coordinated efforts and multipronged interventions required to comprehensively address hunger and food insecurity, there should be agreement that the Plan that sets out these activities be expedited.
Further, in March 2026 your delegation informed the South African Human Rights Commission that the President had issued letters of appointment to members of the National Food and Nutrition Security Council, a Council constituted under the Plan. Why have these appointments not been made public and why has the Council never been convened?
The general lack of urgency and commitment to the right to sufficient food reflected in your response is not befitting of a Minister of Agriculture or a former leader of a major political party.
We therefore reiterate our request that either you, or an appropriately mandated representative of government, receive the memorandum on 28 May 2026, if not because you regard the department as having administrative or political accountability, then to demonstrate government’s solidarity with those who are hungry We look forward to seeing you at your Department on World Hunger Day.
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